By chance, I have read a brilliant post: “Launch A 365-Day Project In 2013” by Marelisa Fabrega. In her post, she encourages and offers 25 ideas for 365 day project. Some ideas enhance and better our lives, like spending 1 hour or some time everyday with our love (wife, kids), or meditate, exercise or take a walk every day for a year; some ideas focus on create and realize our goals and dreams, i.e. spend 1 hour on writing novel, posts or start own business. There are also some unusual and fun ideas like documenting 2013 with a photo a day, cooking a recipe dish a day or talk to someone new everyday….

No matter what comes to your mind for your 365 day project, enjoy and fun with it 🙂 Take the project from a positive, serving a better you (in relationship, health, wealth, career…) perspective and enriching your every day life. It’s important that what you have chosen to do for the coming 364 day is (are) exactly what you want and strongly desire for; because it takes lasting commitment of 364 days to make it successful!

Hsing’s 365 day project – (a) eating a fruit every day for a year and (b) 15 minutes meditation per day;
Loic’s 365 day project – (a) TBD.

From now, we are going to share the results of our achievements first, then inviting you to take the same challenges and let us know how you do!

As the year is approaching to the end (2012) and heading to another new beginning (2013), we start to examine our individual and couple achieved and yet-to-be achieved goals & to-dos, to reflect on our personal learning and growth during the year, as well as looking at goals for coming months.

We have engaged just a month ago and there are lots of activities planned for 2013 already, including our lovely wedding!! We have few other bucket list activities discussed too… Definitely for us, we will be out of our comfort zone; the question is then HOW MUCH OUT OF OUR COMFORT ZONE??!!

Kindness is a selfless act inspired by the love within. It’s a most natural act of love.

Personally I believe we all have a love bulb within us. We have the ability to self-generate the energy and brighten the bulb up any time as we wish. And we all forget about this. In our lives, we have parents, families, friends, colleagues or strangers, people around us who either help us to illuminate brighter or to dim our brightness. We let them influence how bright we are, may be and will be; and neglect the important thing that we are the source of our own brightness.

When the light bulb is on, it radiates warmth and the act of kindness just shines through and takes place itself with abundant love.

The World Kindness Day is coming, on the 13th November! Will you let your love bulb illuminate to the maximum brightness?

Loïc has made his proposal, asking me to marry him, be his wife and be with him forever. Wow… that was a mouth full and very bold in asking, especially the ‘be with me forever’!! Or should I say, it’s I who is more daring to say ‘YES‘ (because by saying ‘yes’, I have committed myself; but for him, he just simply asked the questions, not made the commitment).

With this love note and our new long term commitment, I would like to encourage, challenge and dare every reader to boldly express and declare your love!! No matter it is for your girl/boy friend, wife/husband, partner, parents or secret lover, just go ahead and tell them (and again and again) via words and actions!

We all love to be loved and yet afraid to ask and give completely. Our past experiences or hurts plus self-protection mechanism may somehow prevent us to love bravely. Why let it stopping us from being in love and enjoying love? Why not invite ourselves to give a try, be daring and free? How about starting with simply declaring and saying ‘I LOVE YOU’ or “YOU ARE THE ONE I WANT TO BE WITH” or something intimate from your heart?

It’s your love life, your love call ~

Challenge:

Declaring and expressing your love to the one who matters to you

Extra Challenge:

Express with words and actions

Goals:

To express your love within boldly and freely, leave no regrets and let your love one refilled with your love

Time required:

1 hour

Energy level:

Medium-High (on heart & soul level)

Preparation:

Prepare 2 declaration of love statements and 1 action

Here are few heart-felt statements for your reference:

My life is with a purpose when I am with you

I want to live the rest of my life with you

You make me feel so special

I want to build something great with you in life

You are the one I want to be with

You are exactly what I need in my life

You are my everything, my whole world

I want to have children with you

You make me feel at home

I love you even with your picky character; I learn to appreciate you the whole package

You make me feel loved and cherished

With you, I may start doing big project and not feeling alone

* Encourage and support us by sharing this post with your friends or clicking “LIKE” if you like our post:)

Don’t forget to share with us your experiences and how your life has changed because of the challenge!!

I have to admit, I have been complacent with my August Completed – 30 Days on How to love your partner and switching myself completely off from the areas of bucket list challenges writing and self-disciplining to areas of focusing on relaxation and self-indulgence 🙂

With end of September final updates and reading of “Self-improvement 101” by John C Maxwell. I have woken up from my prolonged self-indulgence and procrastination; realizing that I have been spending lots less time on personal growth. I felt like as if I am standing on an escalator going down, but I am trying to go up; and the moment I stop walking up, I am being taken down by the escalator to the bottom. I did enjoy my own satisfaction and relaxation, but at the same time being fooled by it.

Self-development will not happen by itself for us; it requires dedicated intention and efforts. How much we are willing to invest in ourselves is how much at the end of the day, we will harvest from ourselves. If there is an area of life you would like to develop further, let’s work on it for the coming month. Quoted from Earl Nightingale: “If a person will spend one hour a day on the same subject for five years, that person will be an expert on that subject.” Indeed, 1 hour a day for 5 years, that is 1,825 hours in total, roughly equals to 228 working days (assuming 8 hours per day). It’s like a year of short term study (advance enrichment). I am now amazed that 1 hour a day may turned into something sounds grand, even a second career development!

So, if there is something you would like to spend this 1 hour on?

It’s not ‘time’ that we don’t have, it’s self-discipline. Once your goal is set (and it has to be your passion), then put yourself into a non-bargain-able daily hour program (refer below example, skip weekend if you want) and
Example: first select your to be developed area or subject (i.e. want to learn an instrument, want to be a life coach or learn photography…) and ENJOY the learning experience (not to be burden by it).

Day 30 – Today’s home work: Create a self-love plan of 5 action items for the coming 90 days (July, August, September) The below is my 5 self-love actions with final month, end of Sep updates: (my end of August updates and end of July updates)

Sep 2 – There is nothing more important than embracing and standing firmly for certain family values. I am making the changes for a better family life

Sep 3 – The easiest and fastest way to change the world is to change ourselves.

Sep 4 – Do not let others to decide or to disturb on how I will live through my day today.

Sep 5 – Nothing is so urgent in life (don’t have to rush all the time), unless when life itself become urgent (facing life and death situation).

Sep 6 – Helping others is like having pollen and seeds spreading around, we never know what kind of flowers, fruits or outcomes it will bring. It is not so much about expecting any return, but rather not to underestimate the impacts that we bring on others. (I encourage myself keep on spreading the seeds of surprises!)

Sep 7 – When I start to focus on how much others do for me, I start to realize how little I do for others.

Sep 8 – Loving self is an important life long subject; but we often forget to keep it in the daily program.

Sep 9 – Take 2-3 hours to do something I like regularly, i.e. per week, I feel much more with myself and happy with myself.

Sep 10 – Self-improvement is meant for ‘self’, not for others.

Sep 11 – Type of life we are living in is reflected in the types of daily activities we do. (if want to change the type of life, we got to change the activities)

Sep 12 – “if we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we are not really living.” by Gail Sheehy

Sep 13 – Growth is certainly a choice; no one says it is easy, but for sure rewarding!

Sep 14 – Focus on self-development, not self-fulfillment. (self-development is a bigger goal than self-fulfillment. Self-fulfillment is the by-product benefit of self-development)

Sep 15 – Anyone appears in our lives for a reason. I may not understand what is the reason right away, but I am willing to explore and learn more from them.

Sep 16 – Resting is preparing for the next heard work!

Sep 17 – Finding life purpose calling is not easy (especially we don’t listen to our hearts), but it will come when we start to pay attention.

Sep 18 – Sometimes what I think it is good for others may not be the case. Always double check with consideration.

Sep 19 – Within an interaction, how I react enrolls how other responses. (meaning if I want my boss to trust me that I am handling everything well, I need to first show my boss I am handling my boss well)

Sep 20 – Where I am being myself and expose myself, it does not mean I am weak and vulnerable. I just choose to let others to see the naked me. (don’t have to guess me)

Sep 23 – “A winner knows how much he still has to learn, even when he is considered an expert by others; a loser wants to be considered as an expert before he has learned enough to know how little he knows.“ by Sydney Harris

(3) Two hours of exercise per week (8.5 hours every month) 65% checked – took an hour every week during lunch time to do some fast walking around the block and 30 minutes stretching each night before going to bed. Certainly over the past 90 days, there were still room to improve; and I keep on telling myself to continue going ahead, not to let yesterday’s failure dis-encourages tomorrow’s success!

(4) Two activities per month that I would love to do with myself (2 activities to share each month) Checked! Take a good bath with oil, home made ice tea with candle and music 🙂 Treat myself with world famous singer concert (Madonna’s concert)!!

(5) Save $100 per month for the thing that I always wanted ($100 more at the end of each month) Checked! Not only I have saved $300, a friend of mine has given me an iPAD as a gift! So wonderful~ it’s like when I start to accumulate wealth, wealth itself multiplies!!! (law of attraction?)